When I select the Activities tab of a contact, it shows me all the Activities as it should. With the “Show” dropdown list I can select which type of Activities I can see (mails, appointments, notes, etc…). So far so good.

The trouble is, is that I get too much information when I select “E-mail” option. Right now it is searching through my entire mailbox but I only need it to search some specific folders.

Is there any way I can change this?

You can actually build your own custom Activities views in which you can specify which folders will be searched.

Update: This feature is no longer available in Outlook 2010.

Right click on your Contacts folder and choose Properties.

Select the Activities tab.

Press New…

Here you can specify a name for your folder group and select the folders you want to include in the Activity search.

Click OK and OK again to close the open dialogs

When you now go to the Activities tab of your contact, you can use the “Show” dropdown list to select your newly created folder group.

Note: When your Activities doesn’t show any results when they should, see this previous tip.